Slow Burn
by FrontlineTrifecta
Summary: Hinata's life is turned upside down by an S-Rank mission she was mistakenly assigned. Eventual Kakashi/Hinata, possible character death.
1. A Mistake

"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."  
— Kurt Vonnegut

* * *

Ino wakes up in a cold sweat. Stagnant remains of a dream linger in the back of her mind, the bulk of it hidden by her own subconscious - by exactly where it came from in the first place. The fucking nightmares...

They were killing her.

It doesn't happen the way it does in movies, she realizes. She isn't panting nor did she jolt out of bed. Still, the faint memories are enough to leave her frozen, so much so that she takes pains to shallow out her own breathing, as if her own movement were something she'd naturally detest so thoroughly. It's uncomfortable and she realizes that, but all she can do is squeeze her eyes shut. She doesn't even want to roll around and look at the alarm clock. It was one of _those_ kinds of nightmares. One of the tangible ones that she can feel in the very core of her being, like it was gripping her from the inside and pulling her deeper into a sinkhole of demented thought that she desperately doesn't want to travel and there's literally _nothing_ she could do about it. Not in the slightest.

She does that to herself sometimes.

It's ironic, she realizes. She could hop into other people's minds at her own whim, but she can't even control her own thoughts.

She opens her eyes. Takes a deep breath. Steps out of bed.

* * *

The lights turn on.

Hinata winces, forced out of sleep by the blinding brightness. Rest is a rare thing these days and the unadulterated irritation of being ripped from it hits her immediately.

"Hinata."

Ino's voice. For a split second the Hyuuga almost feels bad for getting all pissy about losing a little bit of sleep. Ino never used to come around like this, especially not before daybreak. They never really even socialized.

"Hinata, wake up."

"I _am_ up."

Kunoichi, remember? Hinata wasn't perfect, but there was no way she'd let someone sneak into her room in the middle of the night and not realize it. That was how people got killed. She wouldn't be one of them. And Ino was never as stealthy as she thought she was.

Hinata forces herself to sit, blankets sliding off and pooling in her lap and around her legs. She rubs at her eyes, blinks hard, yawns. She's one of those girls that takes her time in the morning. Usually she could lay in bed for fifteen minutes before she even opens her eyes. A morning like this had potential to ruin her whole day. Not that it was all that hard to ruin her day anymore.

And she can't help but feel like she knows exactly where this conversation is going to go.

"I think maybe we should change our mission reports before we turn them in tomorrow", Ino says, "Once they're handed over we're screwed."

They'd be screwed either way.

Still, Hinata agrees, "I do, too."

Ino runs a hand through her loose hair. She's a wreck - no make up on her pretty face, deep circles under her eyes and the hand brushing through her hair is trembling. For a girl like Ino Yamanaka to step out of her house without so much as foundation... She was obviously stressing hard.

Not that she was alone in it.

Hinata pulls her knees to her chest, making space for the other girl to take a seat at the foot of her bed. Ino takes the seat with a sigh.

"Actually, I'm not so sure about that." She claims, "There's no point in it now, just..."

She sighs again, long and loud and frustrated. She bends forward, pressing her face into her hands.

The clock on the wall ticks audibly. Makes them feel like fucking insomniacs.

"I just wish I could time travel, you know?" Ino finally says, looking over at Hinata. Meeting her pale eyes dead on.

That's a great way to put it, Hinata thinks. Take it all back with some impossibly perfect time traveling jutsu. "I do know", she agrees.

She feels the uneasiness settle over her as she thinks back, a slow crawl deep in the pit of her stomach. It almost makes her nauseous. This is why grieving alone tends to be easier, especially in their chosen profession. When Hinata is by herself she doesn't have to think about it so much, but here with Ino she's exposed. She has to listen to everything coming out of her mouth and feel the same things replicated in herself - sometimes they're revelations she hadn't even come to yet.

"We got someone _killed_." Ino nearly whispers it, like it was something new to her or something forbidden to say.

"That was nobody's first kill." Hinata says, her words coming out far more blunt than she meant, "This is our job."

Ino's reply is immediate and harsh.

"Oh, shut _up_ with that bullshit, Hinata. You know it's _never_ supposed to happen like that."

It makes Hinata wince. She was never one for conflict or confrontation and Ino is a hard person to help. So she decides not to say anything at all. She averts her eyes, lets her forehead fall against her knees.

They shouldn't have had this conversation anyway.

The bed dips as Ino gets up.

"I don't even know why I came here." She mumbles, more to herself than to Hinata.

And in all honesty, Hinata doesn't know either. She could have just as easily went to Sakura. It probably would have made more sense. Sakura knew Ino better. Sakura was there with them. So, why couldn't Ino have just went to her instead?

With that she leaves, shutting the lights off as she goes, but not before Hinata takes a peek at the ridiculously loud wall clock. It was just going on three o'clock. The sun wouldn't be coming up for a while and their meeting with Tsunade wasn't for several hours.

She tries to just be passive - because why should one mission make it so hard to feel like herself again - and tell herself that Ino was grieving and that's all. The only reason she'd act like that. Still, she can't help but be ever so slightly angry, which only served to agitate her more. It makes one hell of a vicious circle.

She falls back in bed and pulls the covers up over her face and tries to think of something else.

* * *

"Fuck!"

Sakura was already out the door when she realized she forgot it - her hastily written report probably still sitting on her desk next to her empty cup of coffee and mess of post-it notes. She turns, unlocks the door to her apartment, and runs for it.

That was what she got for being so late, she supposed. She couldn't even sympathize with herself. She was up late last night, so what? Lots of other people were too and they still made it to work on time. Plus Ino and Hinata would be waiting at the bridge for her right about now, probably impatiently.

She frowns at the folded up piece of paper in her hands. It is easily the worst report she's ever written in her entire life. Bits and pieces were omitted, the whole thing was generalized... It was out of order. Just a complete mess. Her instructors would be disappointed in her.

Except for maybe Kakashi, who had a penchant for handing in one sentence mission reports. One long run on sentence, too. She would have assumed with all the reading he did he'd be good at something so petty as a mission report. He'd been writing them since he was six years old. They just seemed to deterioriate with age.

And she was late like him too. Look at that. He'd approve.

She rolls her eyes at the thought.

Not even halfway down the street she runs into them.

"What the hell, Sakura? We're supposed to be there in like fifteen minutes." Ino practically yells, hands on her hips and all. Typical attitude from her.

"I had a late shift at the hospital." Sakura lies.

"Yeah, whatever. Hinata and I had a late night, but we still managed to get here on time."

Hinata bites her lip and looks down, ignoring the conversation at hand. It was always awkward when she found herself dragged into the conversation like that, especially considering she wasn't mad at Sakura at all. She could have waited all day. It wasn't like she was in a hurry to hand in the reports. She opens her mouth to say so and then quickly decides against it. She can't find it in herself to speak out of turn and instead opts for her regular default - to let it lapse into an uncomfortable silence and await the end of the argument. These trivial little things always solved themselves, anyway.

"Well, what do you want from me, Ino? It's not like I can travel through time, you know. Just go back and restart my damn morning to make it more convenient for _you_."

That time traveling thing again - it made Hinata reflect. If this was a perfect world...

"Hey, maybe we should just get going?" The quieter of the three finally interjects.

Ino and Sakura agree with silence. As soon as the statement is put out, they're walking.

And _that's_ when the depth set in.

Nobody says anything about changing reports again. They'll just be handed in as they are.

* * *

It only takes a minute. Hinata spent hours freaking out about it and it only ended up taking a minute. Tsunade asked them to drop off the reports and leave, simple as that.

She would have figured a mission like that would require a debriefing.

But she figures that maybe she just got lucky.

Being out of that stuffy office and back outside in the cool breeze was a relief any day, one that she particularily needed right now. As much as it felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off her shoulders from simply getting the whole bureaucratic process complete, she would never be able to wash this mission from her hands entirely.

Just now she doesn't have to stare her own words down. She could avoid it. Things like this always got better with time, anyway. She smiles at the irony. This wait-it-out mentality was probably going to end up the death of her.

Either way, that was one rough mission down. There would be more coming in the future.

She hits her street and turns, deciding to instead spend some free time away from the city and all the noise. The outskirts of Konoha were always nice and some time alone was long overdue. Only a couple blocks away the scenery begins to change from complex apartment buildings and little stores to spaced out houses and dense trees. Lots of littler creatures running around.

A lot quieter.

In her mind, Hinata can almost hear the clock ticking and Ino's voice telling her that things weren't supposed to happen this way. She can almost hear a crackling fire. Loud gusts of wind. A total collapse.

She shakes her head, shudders.

Instead she concentrates on the sound of her feet on the ground.

And then she feels a hand on her arm. She tugs back, summoning chakra to her free left hand.

"Whoa, hey, don't freak out on me or anything now."

She realizes the hand on her sleeve is glove-clad.

"Kakashi?" She asks, confused, looking up to see a masked face and one dull black eye. The chakra she'd summonded fades out into nothing. How could she let herself get so distracted?

He lets go of her and slides his hand in his pocket instead, "I must have called you half a million times, Hinata. You're awful distracted. Don't ever let Kurenai catch you like that or she'll have a few choice words for you."

Kakashi intimidates her, not only because he's a living legend, but because she's seen him in combat personally. She's seen him around his team and she knows what he's like. He isn't the most social person around and they'd never had a single conversation in all the years she'd known him as an instructor. He's just slightly unapproachable.

But Naruto seems to like him, still.

Must just be a student-teacher thing. Hinata much perfers Kurenai.

"I... um..." She feels herself doing it, looking around for anything else to focus on while struggling to avoid the inescapable truth that she was making it bluntly obvious that she was far out of her safty zone. She does _not_ want to meet his gaze.

Kakashi brushes off her unfulfilled explanation with a lazy wave of his hand, "I was wondering something."

Just the way he says it makes her uncomfortable. She knows it's going to be something she doesn't want to hear. And then, so suddenly, she realizes that Sakura is still his _student_, techincally. She wouldn't have said something to him, would she? She isn't stupid. There's no way...

"Since I _am_ Sakura's team leader and everything, at least until she takes the Jonin exam and passes it, could you possibly fill me in on what's going on with her? She's been a little - how should I put it... Off?"

The Hyuuga feels the hot flush spreading across her face and the corners of her mouth turn, her expression shifting toward something like dismay. They were caught. He knew. He was Hatake fucking Kakashi, one hell of a perceptive man, and he knew.

"Um... I-I don't know. She hasn't said anything to me." She tells him, looking up toward that confident glance of his. It feels like he's staring her down. Judging her. She shifts on her left foot.

It's hard to meet his eyes and even harder to get the words out. Lying to a Jonin instructor can get her in a lot of trouble, and just the possibility of getting into that kind of trouble is enough to make her want to break down, especially when combined with the plethora of other stressors this mission threw at her. Kakashi isn't the type to push these things though, so unless he absolutely _knew_ what happened...

"Really?" The Jonin asks, voice impossible to read, " So it doesn't have anything to do with my S-rank you three were mistakenly assigned instead of the A-rank you were supposed to get?"

She feels her heart drop in her chest and her stomach churn as her eyes widen ever so slightly. Her breath stills in her chest. She feels like she's falling. Like she's going to be sick.

"S-Rank?" She asks, and the words just fall clumsily past her lips, she hears them and they sound foreign. They don't even sound like her own words in her head. She can't connect them to anything. They're just _there_.

Kakashi crosses his arms over his chest. She's still painfully aware of his eyes on her.

"See, there was this little mix-up." He explains, "Whatever dumbass they had on duty must have handed the wrong scrolls out. In case you weren't privy, which you probably aren't considering you guys are a bunch of eighteen year old Chunin, before you take any S-class assignment you're given a brief from the Hokage. I was assigned an assassination of one Akiko Matsuda and I wasn't given much information other than some coordinates. That's usually how they work. It's kind of like those little goody bags you get as a child, you know? Every one's a surprise."

He pauses, uncrosses his arms.

Hinata takes a deep breath. She was beginning to feel dizzy, like she might pass out.

"So then I go get my orders. Some escourt job for a rich asshole that didn't even deserve the grade he was paying for. I could have done it in my sleep. _You_ could have done it in your sleep. Alone. So I knew that couldn't be right. I already got the briefing from Tsunade. So, I wondered, who could have gotten _my_ mission? I figured it was probably someone more of my own caliber, someone experienced. S-ranks usually go to ANBU and the like. So, I thought, whoever got it should be fine with it. I took my orders and left. Nothing I can really do about it, right?"

She really just doesn't want to hear it.

"So, I get back to the village in like _six_ hours and hook up with some of the guys I used to work with in ANBU. It turns out that half of them were all trying to get at this mission because not only does this Akiko figure have a kekkei genkai, but she's an _infant_. That's some Black Ops shit and that's exactly the kind of job you'd want to take to get into Black Ops. Those missions make _me_ cringe. They're the whole reason why I left ANBU - killing children and civilians, all these helpless individuals... It's just sick, you know?"

He pauses, as if he's waiting for her to say something. Hinata knows he is. But, at this point, Hinata can't even find words anymore. She does know, all too well.

"I just thought that since this was her first time murdering someone that can't fight back and then burning its body for cold, technical reasons that maybe that might have jarred her a little. She just doesn't seem like the kind of person to let something like that roll off her shoulders."

They already handed the mission reports in and they weren't even supposed to _be_ on that mission? Ino said it herself - things like this weren't supposed to happen. And Kakashi knows about it. They might all go down for this one.

At this point Hinata feels damn near ready to just throw in the towel. It was all for nothing?

She feels tears beginning to well up in her eyes. The familiar ache in her chest. Her breath coming back in uneven hitches.

As if he read her mind, Kakashi tells her, "Don't worry about the reports, I wrote one up in place of your mission. Everything's documented. Besides, Tsunade would rather just get black out drunk than read those reports anyway. And look at it this way - so, you saw some things you're not legally allowed to see. That's unimportant. Nobody has to find out. At least now you know ANBU isn't a place you want to be. I had to learn it the hard way."

Of course. The silver lining of this entire conversation. Hatake Kakashi and his infinite wisdom. Right now Hinata doesn't care too much about personal values, she just wants to curl up in bed and cry. She just wants it to stop.

"There's a darker side to this job, Hinata." Kakashi tells her, "You think that's as bad as it gets?"

She wants to say yes simply because she can't imagine it, she doesn't _want_ to imagine it. She can't perceive feeling any worse than she already is. It'd drive her insane.

"It's not. It's nowhere near it."

She feels the first tear slide down her cheek and she reaches up to brush it away, all the while fighting the sobs that have her entire body trembling. She doesn't need to feel quite that pathetic right now. Standing here in front of Kakashi, listening to him tell her about all the things she was a part of - nothing in her entire life has ever made her feel so _guilty_.

"Just so we all know. Pass the word on, will you?"

With that, he turned and walked away. Finally, Hinata took her chance to really look at him and she wondered - how the hell does a man like that just _walk away _like everything's fine?

And when will she be able to do that again?

* * *

Notes! Kind of like an AAR...

1. Many thanks to for beta reading my shit. The rough draft was a piece of crap and I'm still not one hundred percent happy with this, but... Eh. I only have so much time on my hands and if I keep changing it the way I do I'll never stop.

2. Don't expect regular updates. They will be slightly erratic. Not in a godawful way, but just so you know... I've almost got a chapter two done already. It may or may not be up by Friday.

3. The way I have this fic plotted out so far, there isn't quite an end yet, but... We're probably looking at less than fifteen chapters.

4. Make sure to drop a review! Any constructive criticism is appreciated, but be tactful. I don't take too kindly to flamers :p Or just d-bags in general.

5. And, last thing - I'm open to new ideas for new stories right now. Don't put those in a review, but if you want to make a request (like, any kind of request save for straight up smut) send me a PM. I'll see what I can do for you.


	2. Comfort Betrays

She goes home and she showers. Watches the warm water swirling down the drain.

Numb.

She goes to bed - just collapses in it and passes out. When she wakes up in the morning she can't even remember falling asleep and she feels more tired than she did prior.

She remembers a woman sleeping on a couch. She remembers how easy it was to take her life, because that's just what this job did to her. She remembers it vividly. She also remembers the stark feeling after - that dreaded epiphony. The moment when they realized that the woman sleeping on the couch _wasn't _Akiko Matsuda.

Now, in retrospect, Hinata realizes that the only person the sleeping woman could have been was Akiko's mother.

There's no way she's going back to sleep now. Hinata forces herself out of bed once again. She goes through her regular morning routine, slowly. She knows she's probably due for a mission any day now, maybe today or tomorrow, and that Kurenai is going to be pushing one on her team soon.

Hinata really doesn't feel up to it, though. Not just yet.

She heads for the training fields, figuring Kiba would probably be around there somewhere. It was nine by the time she finally stepped off and Kiba liked to sleep in. He'd probably be out there for his morning work out right about now.

But Kiba isn't who she finds first when she gets out there. It's not even anyone from her own team.

It's Team 7, of course.

Naruto spots her walk past and calls out to her. He waves excitedly. She returns it, naturally. She's not allowed to enjoy it though, not when her brain is forcing thoughts along the lines of what Naruto would think of her if he had _any_ idea of the things she willingly did on that last mission of hers. That stupid S-rank that was supposed to be Kakashi's.

The older man regards her with a blank stare. It only lasts a split second and just like that his attention is back on his silly novel.

Hinata keeps going, but she notes that she and Sakura need to have a little conversation later. She's curious if Kakashi said anything to her or not. He must have.

"Hinata!"

She turns and brushes purple bangs aside in vain, they simply fall right back in the same place. Sakura is running to catch up to her and the medic is by her side in a heartbeat.

"Kakashi-sensei fucking _knows_."

So he did say something.

"He spoke with me, too." Hinata replies, looking over the other girl's shoulder. Naruto is with Kakashi now, harassing him over something, speaking with those grandiose gestures and motions of his. Kakashi is hardly paying any mind to it. Naruto tends to go on and on about the same things, anyway. Hinata kind of loves him for that, though. It makes him adorable.

Again with those thoughts...

"When?" Sakura asks. When Hinata meets her eyes again they're wild. She's terrified.

"Last night."

Guess Kakashi's more impatient than he lets on. So much for patience being a virtue. Hinata wasn't quick enough to pass on the message so Kakashi took care of it himself. She supposes, in all fairness, that Kakashi is just doing them a solid. He filled out a report for the other mission - the one they were supposed to do - so there are no gaps in information and if Tsunade really doesn't read them like he says she won't there won't be anything to investigate either. He's keeping all of them out of trouble.

Because the stuff they saw and the things they did weren't the kind of things they were supposed to be exposed to. They didn't have clearance for any of it.

"He also said," Hinata continues, "That he took care of all the paperwork on his end and that he's not going to say anything to anybody about it."

Sakura's expression drops and her entire posture falls from the sheer relief of that one solitary statement. It must have made her feel like she could breathe again. Hinata didn't even want to think about what her morning had been like with that shit looming over her head for so many hours. Kakashi always has them training at dawn.

"If you ask me, that Chunin should be the one getting in trouble anyway" Sakura says. Hinata thought the same thing too, especially when she was looking for someone to blame it all on.

But, considering the Chunin behind the desk that gave them the mission wasn't actually the one that went on it, that was a clerical error. What they had under their belts was a security breach, be it accidental or not.

Oh, the joy of S-rank missions.

"He...he warned you to stay out of ANBU, didn't he?" Hinata questions. She had her worries, after all. Sakura is an amazing medic and ANBU is always looking for someone to patch men up on suicide mission after suicide mission.

"Yeah, he did."

"I hope you weren't aspiring to do that, Sakura. Be a medic for a group of them."

Sakura laughs, "No, not at all. Where would Naruto be without me there to fix _him_ all the time, anyway?"

Hinata returns the laugh. It feels stilted. Wrong. "Yeah."

Mostly it's because there's nothing funny enough to warrant laughing over. So, they were free of political charges thanks to their own good luck of Sakura having it in with the man that was _supposed_ to kill babies with bloodline limits. They still had the moral part to deal with and that part was the hardest. Nobody could absolve them of that.

Hinata isn't even free of it in her dreams.

Her dreams are the worst - she can remember the nursery in striking detail. The color of every painted star on the wall, the scent of baby powder, the slight notch in the first 'k' in Akiko's name on the wall. All of it.

To include the smell of the carpet set aflame and the slight stickiness in the air from burning adipose tissue. They hung around for way too long after the deed was done - just to make sure the bodies were burnt to embers, of course. Because that was what Konoha wanted. It was what Konoha demanded of its soldiers.

"I'm going to head home, Sakura. If you happen to bump into Kiba or Shino just have them come for me, would you?"

"Yeah, I'll do that."

How the hell was she supposed to carry on like this?

* * *

_Guilty. You're guilty. You burnt that baby and her mother to death and you'll probably burn in hell for it._

Hinata struggles to gain a hold on her thoughts. She wonders if Sakura and Ino are having as hard a time as she is.

"She was absolutely shitfaced. Kept saying something about babies or rabies or whatever. I don't know. I couldn't understand her. She just slurrs a lot, you know?"

Hinata looks over toward Kiba as he finishes up his statement, one hand lazily threading through Akamaru's fur. She stills it, asks him, "Who?"

She hadn't even realized it, but she completely faded out of the conversation at some point. Kiba and Shino just went on without her, mostly on Kiba's end, of course. He was always the most talkative of their trio.

"Ino." Kiba states, "I ran into her at the bar last night. She's just lucky she didn't get date raped or some shit with the crazy shots she was knocking back. What does she weigh, like one hundred pounds soaking wet? I'll never understand that woman."

Tangent aside, Hinata figured Ino would be the one to avoid facing their issue head on. She just didn't think she would be the one getting wasted on a Friday night in stereotypical jaded fashion. At times, even though they were all eighteen years old, it felt like they had already seen all there was to see.

"And it was babies, by the way." The Hyuuga says, returning her attention back to Akamaru and his layers of thick fur.

"What?"

"She was talking about babies. Not rabies."

Beside her, Shino snickers, "Go figure."

* * *

That night Hinata finds _herself_ at the local bar.

Despite her better judgement, she goes by herself. She's a ninja and she can defend herself if she has to, she figures, even if such an environment makes her as uncomfortable as it really does. She's been to worse places and lived in worse conditions.

She just couldn't let it go. The prospect of losing herself in a little alcohol was too awesome a thought to pass up.

So she toughed it out, stepped in the bar. It was all men, as far as she could see, and be it paranoia or not she absolutely hated the way she could feel so many people watch her walk in on delicate sandald feet and slide into an empty seat at the bar.

The waiter regards her with some garbled excuse for, "Can I help you?"

She realizes she doesn't even know what she wants to order. A big, tall glass of amnesia, please? As if...

"Um... Sake, please. The strongest you've got." She finally decides. Sake is what her father drinks.

"How old are you? Do you have ID?" The bar tender asks, shifting away from his current duties to pay full attention to the young woman giving her order.

Hinata points to her forehead protector. Even if she hasn't been legally of age for very long, she's been a kunoichi her entire life. Nobody should care what she has to drink, seeing as she could die tomorrow fighting for this country. Or she could be sent on another one of those missions that brought here in the first place.

So where is karma when she needs it?

Hinata really can't find it in herself to be blunt with this man tonight. She's not that outspoken.

"Right." The man says, turning his back to her. A couple seconds later the alcohol has been produced and she takes it from him with a reserved thank you.

Never much of a drinker, the sake burned a clear path down her throat. To say it was uncomfortable would be putting it lightly. She cringed, an unintentional shiver coursing though her body.

"Ugh..."

That's awful.

The bartender laughs at her, a nasty, gruff sound. It's hard to believe he's happy. The man sounds like he's been smoking a pack a day since birth, and he's not a young man by anyone's standards.

"Don't drink much, kid?"

Why does it have to be so obvious?

Hinata fights the blush spreading across her face and clears her throat to explain herself, "I just really need this tonight."

"You probably don't, acually." Came a different voice to her left - a much smoother, deeper, cleaner baritone.

Kakashi.

"I never thought I'd find you in such a place." He says, taking the stool beside her, "But I'd be lying if I said I was shocked."

Hinata blinks once. Twice. Her mind blanks out. She doesn't know what to tell him. She wasn't really looking to see him here, either.

"I-"

A click comes from below as the bartender places her second shot on the counter. She looks from Kakashi to the alcohol and as much as she doesn't want someone like him watching her down enough liquid courage to make it through the night - and hopefully help her lapse into some sort of alcohol induced coma so she can actually sleep - her first reflex is to just drink it. Just force that shit down her throat.

If she's drinking she can't talk, anyway.

"You're probably making a mistake." Kakashi continues.

Right. That's why he's here, too. To make mistakes.

That's what crosses Hinata's mind and the sheer attitude that attaches itself to the statement just _cannot_ be her own. Subtly, she's disappointed in herself.

She looks over at him, meets his eye, and replies with a much more measured, "And why would you say that? I'm just having a drink, simple as that."

"Liar." Kakashi says, calling her on it, "You're only here to block out bad memories. We all tend to follow the cliche. But you're a little young to be so jaded. And you can trust me when I say that."

He probably speaks from experience. Hatake Kakashi is one extreamly experienced man.

"I'd bet simply talking about it would make you feel better. You don't need to be here because no matter how wasted you get now, you won't forget it in the long run. You'll just wake up in the exact same misery. Just with a hang over."

"What about Sakura?" Hinata asks, as the third shot is placed in front of her.

Shouldn't he be worrying about her? She is his student, after all. Kakashi catches on to the implication immediately.

"Sakura has Ino," He explains, "She didn't even bother to show up for our night operation earlier for her. They talk like that. _You_ on the other hand - you're the third wheel in this situation. And what makes it all the more interesting is that you're the type to bottle it all up. Do stereotypical crap like this."

He pauses, laughs.

It's an interesting sound. Definitely not a jovial one. She's never heard anything quite like it.

"I just didn't seriously think you'd have the balls to walk into a bar like this on your own."

She downs the third shot and cringes all the same. The taste is absolutely awful still.

"Why don't you switch to mixed drinks?" Kakashi questions, "You'd probably like them better."

"I'm okay." Hinata replies.

A fourth shot is handed to her, but by now she's starting to feel slightly tipsy. Just slightly. And maybe it's psychosomatic. Shouldn't she be able to drink more? It was always possible that she was a complete lightweight since she'd never had anything alcoholic to drink before in her entire life, but she decided that once the fifth shot came she'd take that one, too.

She doesn't even realize it until she can feel his fingers on her face, but Kakashi tells her, "You're flushed. Are you hot?"

His skin is cool against hers. It reminds her of the night air just waiting for her - the breeze. The way it carried flames through the entire house on that one silly S-rank... She pulls away from his touch. Kakashi is just too ANBU for her to handle.

"No." She says, looking for that fifth shot. Where the hell is it?

"Don't tell me the alcohol is already hitting you."

She'd lie to him once again, but she really doesn't think she has it in her. The lack of an answer is all the confirmation Kakashi needs. His responsible adult reflexes kick in and he stands up, "I should probably just walk you home."

"That's not necessary." He doesn't need to go through the trouble.

"I think it is."

Kakashi throws some money down on the counter just as her shot comes and he reaches for the young woman, pulls her to her feet.

"I already told you this was a mistake anyway."

"But-"

"But nothing."

She stands against her will, guided to her feet by Kakashi's hands on her upper arms. They feel huge against her, almost too huge, and Kakashi isn't a particularily big guy. But he's definitely authorative.

And he definitely reminds her of everything she came here to escape. It was supposed to be his mission, after all. It was his mission. The irony is staggering. It's just biting in the worst way possible. She's positive that the thought is what's making her head spin.

There's no way it's the alcohol. She just got started - on an empty stomach, inexperience, and a load of bad memories. The worst combination.

Kakashi guides her out the door and she stops, feels her back bump his chest. Her head barely touches his shoulder.

"What?" He asks, backing up.

She didn't mean to stop so abruptly like she did. It was just that once the question hit her it was now or never. And she asked, as firmly as she could manage, "How do you _deal_ with it? Didn't you say something about leaving ANBU because of these missions, yet they still give them to you? I don't understand it."

Kakashi's hands leave her shoulders and Hinata is forced to stand on her own. He steps aside and without the warmth of a body behind her she's hit with the weather full-force. It's uncomfortably cold tonight. She doesn't like it. It's not the way she was thinking it'd be.

"I got used to it." Was the jonin's reply, "I talk a lot. Mostly to ghosts that may or may not even be there. I've been around a hell of a lot longer than you have. The things I've done - well, seeing you after just this one mission - I'm not so sure you would be able to handle. It's not like I can't understand where you're coming from - in fact, it's quite the contrary. My first S-Class was similar to yours in a lot of respects. I was fifteen."

Hinata feels a series of questions bubbling up, but she doesn't know how she's supposed to ask them. She doesn't know what's too personal or when she'd be crossing a line. She's never even had a real conversation with this man before and the last time they spoke was a tad traumatic for her.

But all in all, she finds this not onlt strikingly captivating, but relieving.

Kakashi has been where she's been.

She lets it all out in a statement, "I don't... I-I just don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself."

"You'll be fine." Kakashi decides, "All three of you will. This shit happens. And it does get easier eventually."

They leave it at that.

He walks her home. She doesn't ask any more questions.

* * *

She sees him the next morning. She's miserable - her head hurts, her body aches - but she makes her way over to him as quick as she can, a light jog to catch up to his lazy pace in the distance.

Kakashi, ever so observant even in his carefree ways, must have heard her coming. He turns and catches her running.

In an effort to make it less awkward, Hinata waves.

Kakashi waves back, stopping to let her catch up.

Oh shit. What was she supposed to say now?

"I wanted to thank you for last night." She says, looking up at him, grateful that his stature blocked out most of the glaring sun. Not to mention the fact that she was thankful she managed to think on her feet so quickly for once.

The perfect excuse.

"Oh, it's no problem. You really should take better care of yourself, anyway. Hopefully we don't have a repeat of that, right?"

His reply almost went over her head as an epiphony hit - excuse? Since when did she need an excuse? Since when was she looking for an excuse to talk to Kakashi?

Yeah, she realized that maybe this was a bit comforting. Kakashi was full of all the right things to say to her. He knew what she was going through and he could read her like a book. He understood where she was right now. But she could surely get that comfort from someone else.

But, then again, maybe she couldn't.

She realizes that she fucking _looked_ for him. She needs some advice from him.

"Yeah, right." She says, quietly. She's still overwhelmed by her own thoughts and her brain works on autopilot, giving that ridiulously generic response just to hopefully avoid Kakashi catching on to her obvious distraction. Hinata didn't want to go giving it away now.

His one visible eye closes with his smile and Hinata bites at the inside of her cheek as yet another dreaded realization hits her.

She has to be compensating, right? She looked for him.

There's no way she isn't.

There's no way she could possibly have a legitimate crush on this man. That's ridiculous. She _just_ wants to hear what he has to say to her. She just wants to be able to take what he can give her - nothing romantic, just lessons from one shinobi to the next. So, all rationale applied, it shouldn't matter that he looked for him.

Kakashi is a teacher. She's still a chunin.

They're involved in something horribly illegal together, though nobody has to know about that part...

Kakashi knows exactly what she's going through. She remembers, vaguely, him saying it to her last night. Something about his own first S-rank.

"Missions come and go, Hinata. It'll make sense to you one day."

"When?"

Kakashi shrugs, "When you're a grown up."

A short silence elapses, Kakashi's one visible eye as stoic as ever yet she feels it evaluating her. He's always searching for what's underneath the underneath, digging for all the context there is to find, and what kills her about it is that Kakashi doesn't have to work too hard to find it.

So is she as transparent as she feels?

"You did the right thing. As hard as it was, you did the right thing. That baby had a bloodline limit. It was her life or potentially dozens. Who knows what could have happened if you hadn't done it."

Hinata listens to him talk and she absorbs it, holding on to the words tightly, storing them for when she'll need them. She has those moments where she gets down on herself real deep, cutting and searching blind and blaming. Those moments are what these words were made for.

"I would have done the same thing." Kakashi continues, telling her exactly what she wants to hear. He's feeding her emotions. Assuaging the guilt and he probably knows it. Nobody deserves to live like they do.

It wasn't easy and Hinata can feel the excuses on the tip of her tongue. She wants to tell Kakashi that she wasn't the one to deliver the killing blow to Akiko's fragile body. She wasn't the one to light the fire. As she remembers it, nobody wanted to do it. None of them wanted to do that a a child.

And she decides to do it, anyway. Get it off her chest while Kakashi is right here to listen, because every conversation with him has to turn right back into it.

"I didn't kill her with my own hands, you know." She says.

Kakashi quirks one thin, silvery-gray eyebrow, "Oh? Then who did? Don't tell me it was Ino."

Hinata shakes her head. "None of us did."

"I'm not following, Hinata."

She swallows hard, shrugging, "We had to get rid of the mother's body. We lit it on fire."

She stops there, doesn't need to explain it any further.

Kakashi sighs and it sounds disappointed. Hinata knows Kakashi isn't disappointed in them for avoiding that blood on their hands, though. She's been dealing with this same struggle for days now.

"Smoke inhalation is a horrible way to go, you know." He says, "And burning to death..."

Fire travels fast. Kakashi's proficient in fire techniques for a reason. He knows what fire does to a body. He knows what it feels like. What it sounds like. What it looks like.

"That was a bad move on your part. Pure cowardice."

His words are sharp and painful.

"But I understand why you would have made such a mistake."

It hurts.

Hinata feels the emotional rollercoaster beginning to take over again and she's suddenly feeling irrational. Or, _more_ irrational, rather.

Kakashi frowns under his mask and slides his hands into his pockets. He can see the devistation all over this young girl's face, but it doesn't change what he says to her. Kakashi's morals and values have been harshly shaped by the rough life he's lived and they're only malleable to a certain extent anymore. Even a man like Kakashi has to have a way to cope with life in general.

"Learn from it." He tells her.

Hinata regrets the whole conversation. She feels the warmth of a tear sliding down her face and under her chin. She sees it fall in one impossibly perfect dot on the dirt by her feet. Kakashi sees it too, but he doesn't acknowledge it. More will follow.

She turns her back to him and brings her hands up to her face, hiding behind them.

She'll understand when she's a grown up, he says. She made a mistake, he says.

This whole fucking thing was a mistake.

"You're going to be fine, you know."

It would be nice to get a little more comfort than that, than just words. From Kakashi it might be inappropriate, from Ino and Sakura it would be painful, and all she had left was herself. Nobody else could even know.

Hinata always thought grieving alone was easier, but now with Kakashi doing all this shit to her she thought maybe it'd be easier with someone else to rely on.

But Kakashi is so temperamental.

She doesn't even have anything to say back to him and eventually Kakashi turns and walks away.

* * *

And here comes the AAR.

1. This feels rushed to me. Does anyone else find it horrible or am I doing it right?

2. This chapter ended up being four thousand some odd words long. Expect them to vary from two to three thousand words. This probably won't happen much.


End file.
